What are you working on now?There’s a novel, yeah, and maybe there’s more than one. There are plenty of dead novels too. But I’m going to break my own rule by forgoing specifics. Instead, let’s talk David Lynch; more specifically, the Twin Peaks Project, spearheaded by Shya Scanlon, the reason this excerpt is being published today, as contribution to the project as well as a capstone, the conclusion to my curating duties for Everyday Genius. Lynch, like JG Ballard (and insane, loud, violent metal music), continues to be one of my biggest influences. If I’m writing a sentence that takes a strange, unexpected turn, or outlining a concept that reveals something darker, less contemporary, more odd and surreal, than expected, I blame Lynch. With this novel, Miseryhead, I went in figuring I should embrace the Lynchian tendencies. Things got real weird. Really fucking weird. Yeah… Anyway, cheers to Lynch. Cheers to Shya Scanlon, and the Twin Peaks Project. Cheers to those that dig this excerpt. Cheers, and keep it, as always: \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/.

The excerpt was published primarily to commemorate Shya Scanlon’s incredible Lynchian-love effort, The Twin Peaks Project. If it weren’t for Shya, I wouldn’t have had the nerve to publish one of my own on Everyday Genius. Happy to be involved, happy to have gathered so many great names, and, honestly, happy to be done. Don’t let anyone tell you this stuff’s easy.

(from Shya Scanlon’s post) Michael Seidlinger was one of the first people to volunteer for the Twin Peaks Project. And judging from the excerpt from his forthcoming novel, Miseryhead, it’s easy to understand his enthusiasm. Much like in Twin Peaks itself, there’s a striking strangeness at work in the excerpt–a normal-ish high school setting is home to a “mannequin” toted around by the narrator, a principle who wears a suit of armor. There’s a delicate balance to be struck with this kind of casual surrealism. You don’t want to draw too much attention to it within the narrative, so it works away at the reader while he/she tries to focus on the goings on and more familiar logic of the frame story. It’s a balance Seidlinger, like Lynch in Twin Peaks, pulls off perfectly. The book should be out sometime in 2015, and I look forward to it.